תומר סטולבוב

My name is Tomer Stolbov. I am a fashion designer, buyer, and lecturer in the Fashion Department at the University of Haifa.

The work Second Chance emerged from the wardrobe left behind by my grandfather, Shmuel. To me, his clothes had always seemed banal—devoid of charm or any distinctive statement. Only after his passing, when I went through his garments, was I surprised to discover a collection of boxer shorts decorated with colorful and unexpected prints. These were intimate, everyday items, on the one hand mundane, and on the other concealed, revealing a personal layer that my grandfather had never exposed in his lifetime.

Following this unexpected discovery, I sought through the work to propose a different way of looking at a person and their clothing choices, precisely through garments that are usually hidden from view, and to explore what happens when they are brought into the open. I exposed my grandfather’s colorful underwear, peeled away inner layers of tailored garments, and revealed concealed details embedded within them.

Throughout the process, I was also accompanied by the idea of organ donation after death, a practice in which parts of one body are transplanted into another, granting it new life. Drawing on this analogy, “organs” from different garments in my grandfather’s wardrobe were extracted and transplanted into other pieces. In this way, his clothes ceased to be static remnants and became living components within a new creation.
By combining items from different sartorial worlds tailored with sporty, undergarments with outerwear—a new conceptual, colorful, and textural language emerged, one that blurs the boundaries between inside and outside, intimacy and publicity, past and present.

The work was created at Shenkar College, under the guidance of Orit Freilich and Debbie Elhayani.